


Black Box

by Kathar



Series: Two-Man Rule [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Conspiracy Theories, M/M, Secret Identity, mind control?, no seriously ALL the conspiracy theories, post episode s01e05 Girl in the flower Dress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2018-01-01 00:03:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kathar/pseuds/Kathar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is a very dangerous game you're playing, Clint." </p><p>"She's a big girl. I didn't ask her to join the Tide, I didn't ask her to join SHIELD, and I certainly didn't ask her to do both at once. Those were all her choices. I'm just here to make the most of it."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Box

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks and more thanks, first of all, are due to my amazing and long-suffering beta J, without whom this would (literally) be half the story it is. You were right all the way through. As usual.
> 
> Black Box started out as a way to noodle around with some different Coulson Lives theories, and a proof of concept for the Clint-and-Skye plot. It got away from me a bit. 
> 
> Then my apparent braintwin, the fantastic [Faeleverte](http://archiveofourown.org/users/faeleverte/pseuds/faeleverte), beta’d it. It became clear we could be writing in the same universe and this turned into a series-- ~~of which she'll be posting the second part soon~~. The second story, "Rebooting," is now live.
> 
> We've got a third part in the works, and it’s increasingly evident that this has gotten away from both of us kind of a lot. In the best of ways.

_71593: im officially in! as a consultant or something, but whatever. screw you guidance counselor, right? i gots me a job in the exciting world of shadowy government agencies!_

_76646: I think they call pple like u "assets" in shadowy government agency-speak. Congrats! Knew u cld._

_71593: hey theyd be mad not to recruit a hacker with my skillz, right? look-- not a word on this one, right? shield has eyes everywhere._

_76646: Roger. I won't share with the rest of the Tide. Best u keep a low profile 2. U gonna be ok?_

_17593: please. i was born ready for this. you?_

_76646: U have 2 ask?_

_17593: guess not. anything for me?_

_76646: Nothing more on them. Ur the best place u could be 2 look._

_17593: i mean on shield. but thanx for that too._

_76646: Keep backchannels open. There's a mole in SHIELD._

_17593: besides me?_

_76646: BRB_

"Clint, are you ever going to come out of the cave?" Clint Barton looked up at Natasha over his laptop's lid, his face blue-lit.

"Any reason I should?" 

Natasha stood in the doorway to Clint's room in the nearly-rebuilt Stark Tower, the light from the hall streaming in around her silhouette. She was in her tac suit, a duffel at her feet and a paper bag in her hand. He blinked, sniffed, and stood. 

He took the bag from her as she looked around the room and tsked, and he wondered if it was obvious just how seldom he was actually in it for anything other than long sessions spent staring at a screen. Well, the apartment had a dog and rooftop barbecues. The Tower didn't. So there. She waited until he'd gotten the sandwich unwrapped and was hunched over it, pastrami dangling from his lips, before she wandered by the computer.

"Minecraft? Could you think of something a little less transparent next time, please?"

"Probably not?" Clint offered around a mouthful, and swallowed. She ran a hand over the keyboard, and he came back to her, hooking his chin over her shoulder and hugging around her back, just for a moment, just because he could. He was the only one who could.

“You’re horrible at being devious,” she told him.

“Yeah, well, I always had you and Phil to be devious for me, before.”

(He didn’t choke on those words, either, he didn’t. The pastrami was dry.)

"How's he doing?" Natasha asked as he pulled away long enough to take another bite of sandwich.

"The Bus is back in the air. Most of the bugs are gone; apparently they have a ‘bot for that. Cute little thing, big spider eyes. It missed two: one in the bay, one in his office. Don't know how long or how well they'll work. Nat-- thanks for the assist on that. I couldn't have gotten those in on my own." She turned and stared at him.

"When did you learn humility, Hawkeye?"

"Catch me telling anyone but you that." 

"I won't hold my breath."

He laughed, relaxing just a little, before she continued:

"Your inside man?"

"Still in." His shoulders had immediately gone tense.

"This is a very dangerous game you're playing, Clint." He pulled away from her, pushed the laptop cover down, and went to crack the blinds open, blinking in the afternoon sunlight.

"I'll be all right."

"Will _she_?" 

He turned.

"She's a big girl. I didn't ask her to join the Rising Tide, I didn't ask her to join SHIELD, and I certainly didn't ask her to do both at once. Those were all her choices. I'm just here to make the most of it." Natasha huffed.

"Didn't you? Tell me then, how _did_ she come to find that document on her parents? And how did she come to Coulson's attention? Mere coincidence?" 

Clint would have liked to say so, and it was even true-- for a given and very loose definition of "coincidence," where "coincidence" stood for "if Clint hadn't already been dabbling around with the Rising Tide he wouldn't have noticed Skye, and certainly wouldn't have had a chance to steer her into all those other 'coincidences.'" 

Semantics. 

"Maybe," he said instead. "Everyone makes mistakes." 

" _This_ is a mistake, Clint." She took his hand, pulled him down to sit in the armchair by the window and crawled into his lap. Clint sighed into her hair, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This was exactly why he hadn't told her what he'd been doing until very recently. 

Natasha had already worried enough about him, about the kind of patchwork he'd made of his personal life ever since the Battle of Manhattan. She'd grumbled about the inconvenience of his new apartment, tucked away in Bed-Stuy. Raised an elegant eyebrow at him when he'd introduced his stray dog, then his stray teenaged archer. 

Sure, she’d relaxed a bit when he'd taken up Stark's offer of a room in the rebuilding Tower, for Just In Case. That had been a short-lived reprieve. When she found out he was there most often when no one else was, on his new laptop, until the small hours of the morning (it beat not-sleeping, and it turned out JARVIS was very helpful with things like breaking encryption software), she’d taken to dropping in at odd times. But that wasn’t the reason he’d hesitated. 

No, Clint could have handled any amount of worry, frustration, dubiousness, second-guessing, if only she didn't have a really bad habit of being _right._

"Make a choice. Confront him, or Fury, or whomever." He grunted and turned his face away from her. She sighed. "Or you could accept he moved on."

She was on the floor, rolling to standing, before she registered his shove, muscle memory bringing her to her feet, long years of familiarity holding her still, even with her hands up and fisted.

"He hasn't just _moved on_. If it's _him_ , if it's really _him_ , he's staying away for a reason. He wouldn't do that, Nat. You of all people should know that."

"Everybody moves on, Clint," she whispered back at him. "I of all people should know that."

" _Not Phil_. You haven't been dumped more times than I have, toots. But _he wouldn't do that to me_." His voice was cracking. "He wouldn't come back to life and not let us know. If it's him, something's wrong. It _has_ to be." He turned his back to her as he said it, fingers digging into his biceps hard enough to leave bloodless prints. Even from across the room, her sigh lifted hairs on the back of his neck, and he tipped his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. 

" _If_ it's him? We've both seen the footage, we've both seen the files-- and theoretically we should have reported the lack of security in Dr. Streiten's files to Hill long ago." Clint snorted, and Natasha ignored it, because it was hardly an argument between them. 

She was never one for reporting things like that anyway, more for exploiting them, on the grounds that SHIELD should damn well know better. It was the fragility of his status in the organization that concerned her; he’d only recently been restored to active duty and his old access levels. And it had been a near-run thing. Everyone from the WSC, the psychologists, the xenoneurologists (in any sane world, that would not have been a thing people could specialize in), Hill, Fury, to Clint himself had balked at one point or another in the process.

So yeah, it sucked that his relationship with SHIELD lately was so tenuous he'd felt compelled to find ways to hack into their databases. Just... just to watch. Just to know what they were planning for him. But of all the stupid things he'd been doing lately, Natasha had actively _helped_ him on this one. And that? That was fucking telling.

And he'd been right to do it, a fact he had refrained from pointing out (more than once) when she'd seen the evidence laid out in front of her. Phil Coulson, alive and... well. And marked for a return to duty in the coming week. It was highly improbable, to say the very least, but it was there encoded in 1s and 0s, mocking both of them and their supposed Level 7s. 

"It _is_ him," Natasha continued. "What are you thinking? No-- never mind. I've seen your Netflix cue." He did look up then, startled.

"Okay, I know you’ve been worried, but _that_ worried?"

"No, you were having another late-night hacking session and I was bored. Star Trek: the Next Generation? Terminator? Blade Runner? You're moderately obvious, Barton. Plus, this." She pulled the battered paperback of _Sunrise Alley_ , out from under a pile of scattered clothing on the floor. He scowled.

"It's plausible," he said. "Life Model Decoys; I know Fury and Stark both say they're not operational yet, but Fury-- well. If Fury were telling us everything we wouldn't be here. Or if not that, cloning--" it was Natasha's turn to snort, "or maybe he's just a cyborg."

"Clint, stop!" Natasha threw up her hands. "Is it likely?"

"Stranger things have happened, Nat. Hell, I was mindfucked by a god-who-happens-to-be-alien, where does _that_ fall on your list of likely things? All I'm saying is--"

"Clint, are you seriously afraid that you'll meet Coulson and he'll turn out to be a robot?"

"No."

"Well," she exhaled sharply, "good."

"No, I'm afraid I'll meet him and he'll turn out not to be _him_. A robot I could handle. It'd be weird, at first, but...." he shrugged, and gestured to the discarded paperback at her feet, helplessly. It was bookmarked in several places, and Clint had them all memorized: the character's description of his death and cybernetic life as an organic mind in a neural mesh. The fight over his legal status. The sex scenes. (Purely for research.)

"... and you've lost me. You'd be okay with Coulson being a cyborg, or a clone, or an LMD, as long as he's _still him_?"

"Yep." She shook her head, and raised it to stare at him, her elbows on her knees.

"Some days, I think I will never understand you." He imitated her posture, and they faced each other across the short distance, eyes locked.

"Nat, they've clearly gotten the nice ass part of him right, if he's had a body transplant. If his mind is still there, if his mind is still his own... look, what's the _worst_ thing that could have happened?" His drawn, shadowed face cracked into a near-smile as he asked the question. She let it reflect on her face.

"Now you sound like Coulson. You've imprinted, Barton."

"On you both, and you know it. Since he’s not here, someone’s got to ask the question. So I did, and here’s my answer: the worst possible thing would be if something's walking around pretending to be Phil Coulson, but without his mind and heart. Or with both, but without his will." He shuddered, dropped his gaze, and found her hand reaching out to his knee.

They both knew what it was like. To be unmade.

"When I was..." his voice cracked. "When I was, I had my own memories, my own body, my own skills, but I had _his_ heart and _his_ will. I spoke with my words but with _his_ voice. So tell me, was I more or less Clint Barton then than Phil Coulson would be Phil Coulson with his mind and his heart and his will but not his body? Nat-- I think I can handle anything, except finding out that someone's controlling him somehow. That Fury has a little remote control built into him, or... or something."

"Oh my god, I am seriously going to have to censor your reading, Clint." She'd gone pale-- well, she was always pale. She'd gone paper white. White and red and black, sitting in the chair across from him, withdrawn into some little world beyond him for a moment. Even wallowing in the middle of his own angst, Clint reached out to shake her, until her eyes bobbed back to him.

"I see better from a distance, need to maintain some right now," he told her. “I need to maintain some hope.”

When she left, Clint turned back to the laptop, pulling up the last conversation he'd had with Skye and frowning at it for several moments.

Then he brought up the little feed in Coulson's office. The man was absent for the moment, but he'd be there, eventually. And if Clint was lucky, he might catch a glimpse or two of him as he wandered through, might get to see the curve of his shoulders as he hunched over his desk.

It could be just like the old days, only by remote access.

___

_17593: thank you thank you thank you_

_76646: Thats what I'm here for. Next time tho please not to out urself as a double agent in front of someone like Quinn, ok? Might as well put it on wikileaks._

Skye sat curled up in the back seat of the SUV, one thumb moving rapidly on her cellphone as she scrolled the feeds and encrypted chat rooms of the Rising Tide on her laptop with the other hand. She was still coming down off the high of the mission, off the way her stomach had dropped when she'd realized that Quinn had gotten away. That Quinn had gotten away believing-- what?-- about her. And that he had connections just like she did.

Well, no. Not, apparently, _just_ like she did, because she'd logged on to find things already largely under control. It was nice that one corner of her life was. 

_17593: psh, that's so two years ago and you know it. dude whats this one?_

_76646: Which one?_

_17593: “U believe that? I bet u she just refused to hop in his pants and now he's trying to get back at her.” that is so much fucking bullshit!_

_76646: Effective bullshit, tho. It's all about the audience. Suggesting on another forum that someone from SHIELD impersonated u._

_17593: ok srsly? whos gonna buy that?_

_76646: Look for urself._

_17593: woah._

_76646: I'm not even the only one doing it. Who's the dude in Austin? The one saying QUINN’S the SHIELD plant? I like that one._

_17593: thats not just Some Dude. jeez_

_76646: Okay: big fucking deal hacker dude in Austin. He know u?_

_17593: yeah. a bit_

Understatement of the year, there, but she wasn't really going to get into the whole "taught me all I know, fucks like a shaggy hipster bunny and I kinda miss him a lot." Not her Rising Tide contact’s business, not something he could help with (or could he? He could help with the weirdest fucking things).

_76646: He know what ur doing?_

_17593: not really. knows im in shield, knows what I'm looking for._

_76646: I'm jealous, i think._

_17593: come on, he hasnt heard from me since i joined. youre the one i conspire with. i don't want to get him in trouble._

_76646: Me on the other hand...._

Yes, him, on the other hand. When she'd first “met” him, when the Rising Tide was recruiting like anything in the aftermath of the Battle of Manhattan, she hadn't thought much of him. A couple older members had vouched for him, though at least one had said they'd thought he was dead. If not dead, at least retired. If not retired, out of the game. He certainly wasn't the Tide's top hacker-- that was arguably her. Or "that dude from Austin." What the guy lacked in coding chops, though, he made up for in access. He knew where the bodies were buried, and he was willing to show her. (No one else that she knew of, which was good. She could get jealous, too.)

_17593: you were born in trouble. i didn't help. holy shit, do people still really bring up the trilateral commission?_

_76646: I give it another hour before someone suggests ur a reptilian. Conspiracy theorists- I love em._

_17593: yeah well fuck you too._

_76646: Oh please. I dont see u wearing a tin foil hat anytime soon, or thinking the Illuminati got Kennedy._

_17593: you don’t EVEN believe the single bullet theory._

_76646: Nope. Mafia. Feel better about things?_

_17593: i will once Himself says something about it._

_76646: He hasn’t?_

_17593: long fucking silences and looks- is that a problem?_

_And how would you know if it was, anyway, hmmmm?_

_76646: Not necessarily. The others treating u okay? Tall Dark and Surly?_

_17593: yea were bonding over traumatic childhoods_

_76646: Sounds like fun. Abusive dad or uncle, or dead mom, or both?_

_17593: abusive BROTHER absent parents, you seem not at all shocked_

_76646: Spy agencies run on tragic family histories. It's a known thing. What about the others?_

_Oh. Well then._

_17593: i think im growing on badass mama. me and the braintwins get along fine._

_76646: Good. U need pple at your back._

_17593: hey I got you too._

_76646: Yeah. Okay, I decrypted the packet you sent. I'll strip it and see if anything's useful._

_17593: got anything for me?_

_76646: Nothing new on that couple. If i had the security codes for NM I might be able to find a way to access the paper files. On the Tide side, they set up new protocols for a couple of the decrypt sites in Europe. Bet they didn't tell you. Passing them along. Keep your head down for a bit. Be alert. Be devious._

_17593: you be devious, you_

Someone opened the door on her. 

"You still needing your you time?"

"Always room for Agent Coulson," she said, smiling up at him. 

Coulson clambered into the SUV next to her, and she dropped her phone on the seat beside them, open mid-level in Fruit Ninja. Coulson didn’t even glance in the direction of the glowing screens as he settled in next to her, joking easily. She wasn't going to be fooled, damnit. Either Coulson was lulling her into a false of security before pouncing, or he was doing some kind of team-building thing, or-- actually, he just kinda looked like he needed to relax. Okay. She could... do that?

It was surprisingly nice, just talking with him in the quiet dimness. Moving from confessional to jokes about her van naturally as if they'd bantered for years. She'd have to see if she could get him to answer to Himself sometime. Just for the hell of it.

___

“Same view, different day,” Natasha said from the doorway, her duffel by her feet. She’d been gone and back, and clearly she was going again. It was getting hard to keep track of her comings and goings, what with his own frequent absences and general hermitlike behavior when home. It felt like years since they’d been quite so disconnected. Not even That Stark Mess had been quite so weird. Clint stood, not bothering this time to close the laptop, and wandered over to her.

It was dark outside, rain splattering against the window. Drops were still caught in her red hair.

“Not a bad view though, right?” he said, drawing her into the room. She put a fingertip up to his face, traced the tender puffs of skin under his eyes.

“I’ve seen better on you,” she said. He looked down and tried to laugh, glanced back up into her worried eyes.

“You’ve seen worse, too.”

“I have, at that. I'm glad to see you at the Tower again, but I wish you'd come out and say hello. Stark's in town. Downstairs in his workshop."

"It's not Stark I'm here for, it's his firewall."

Natasha sniffed her disapproval.

"Your little hacker friend, she’s had a busy time of it.” 

“She’ll be all right; I’ve been lending a hand.” 

Natasha grunted, stepping back fully and patting him on the cheek.

“I’d have had words if you weren’t.”

“Nat? Tell me what you think about this,” he said as she turned away from him to wander over to the laptop. She raised an eyebrow at the window he had open. “I have hours of video on that bug-- it’s the only one remaining by the way-- of him doing that.”

“Trying to clear a handgun.”

“Right.”

“There are things other than having a-- what did you call it? A full body transplant?-- that can cause you to lose muscle memory, Clint. Don’t take it too much to heart.” She led him over to one armchair and pushed him into it, falling into a second one herself. She looked hollowed out.

“I know, I know, I just can’t--”

"Your worst-case scenario, yes. What's the worst thing, do you think, from his point of view?"

Clint opened his mouth, shut it again. She waited, watching him. Eventually, he shrugged.

“What if he isn’t an LMD?” she asked him, finally, leaning forward. “And what if he isn’t… like we were. What if whatever they did to make him live, the price was greater than he’d be willing to pay?” 

“Nat, I-- you’re not trying to tell me something, are you? This isn’t your way of leading up to ‘I stood at the crossroads and sold my soul to bring Coulson back’?”

“Is it _yours_?”

“God no.”

“Really?”

“Really. No crossroads demons. No other sacrifices. They didn’t ask me. You?”

“No. None of it.”

“Okay.”

They both sat back, still narrow-eyed, before first Natasha and then Clint collapsed into half-hearted little spurts of laughter.

“I can’t believe you, Clint. _Crossroads demons_?”

“Hey! Thor’s a thing, maybe those are too.” She stretched out a booted foot and toed his knee.

"My god, you’re coming unhinged. _You_ were not honestly first on my list. I was thinking... about myself. The Red Room, the Infinity formula. SHIELD tells me they've never been able to replicate it, but they say a lot of things. Between myself, Rogers, Banner... and now Pepper Potts and Stark and that Extremis formula, and Project Centipede, how many different options can you think of, most involving people you know, that might have been used to bring Coulson back to life? In ways that would feel like betrayal?"

Clint frowned, leaning forward to take her hand.

"Nat..."

"That’s just the start, purely off the top of my head. And perhaps no more likely than that he's a clone, but tell me you don't think it would crush Coulson. Especially if he couldn't fix it, couldn't undo it, had to live with it." 

"You already know the answer to that question," Clint said, and rose. He went back to the laptop and brushed the keys, staring blankly down at it. Natasha stood, still between lines of shadow and lamp light. How long had she been turning that over in her mind, on sleepless nights, while he was giving himself a crash course in cybernetics and legal personhood? Should he have been censoring _her_ reading too, all along? (Not that it would have helped, since the problem was clearly and horribly her memories not her paperbacks.)

"Clint--"

"It's horrible, Nat. But... it wouldn't keep him away from us. Away from anyone else, maybe, but never us. Not unless, no, not _even_ if Fury flat-out ordered it. None of that could possibly be so bad that I wouldn’t want to see him.”

“What if he didn’t know you’d feel that way?” Natasha whispered. Clint bowed his head and scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck.

“I’m tired of hypotheticals. I’m so fucking tired. Here’s what I _do_ know: Phil Coulson-- or something closely resembling him-- is back. It’s either not him, or it is. If it is, he’s either trying to protect us, or he doesn’t know no one told us. And if he doesn’t know that…” he abruptly sat down again, in the desk chair, and stared into the distance, blinking. “... maybe he doesn’t know what’s wrong. _If_ anything’s wrong. Maybe-- oh, God, Nat, maybe they’ve found a way to make him think everything’s _fine_. Not-- I don’t mean controlling him. Maybe they’ve just snowed him.”

“Nonsense. You can’t snow Coulson.” But her eyes had gone wide.

“Not for long. Not for long you can’t.” 

“Unless you implant memories. SHIELD was able to break the remaining control the Red Room had over me, they were able to sort my real memories from my implanted ones.” 

It took him a long moment.

“Oh.”

“‘Oh.’ If they can undo it-- maybe they can _do_ it, too. Clone or no clone, him or not-- if he doesn’t know anything is wrong-- if they’ve implanted some story, about him, about us….” she was shaking her head, turned and tucked away from him. He ran his hands through his hair, scrubbed them over his face and sighed before he spoke into the silence.

“You’ve got to-- I’ve-- we need to see Streiten’s files again. That’s what’s happened. He doesn’t know anything is wrong. Or he does, but he doesn’t know what it is.”

“Nonsense again. He’d ask us to help, if he knew something was wrong but didn’t know what.” Clint’s laughter was harsh.

“He wouldn’t need to. He knows that. We’re already here, aren’t we?”

“We are. ... are we still going to keep our distance?”

That didn’t take more than a moment’s thought, and it had nothing to do with him being a coward.

“Hell yes we are. If he knows and he thought it would be safe, he’d have made contact. If he doesn’t know, let’s not compromise him.” And it delayed the time until Clint would have to find and face whatever answer it was, whatever he would see in Phil’s gaze when it was turned on him. “I’ve got eyes and ears on him, and you and me, we’ve--”

“You, not me.” Natasha smiled ruefully as his shoulders slumped. “I leave at oh two hundred. So does Rogers, and it’s indefinite. I’m sorry. You know I would--”

“I do.” He swept her into a hug, molding himself to her body for a long moment, trying to imprint himself onto her. Her fingers dug into his back. “Break a leg.” She sniffed, her usual reaction to that.

“Be alert. Be careful. And Clint-- rethink your mole. It’s a fine line you’re walking, and I can’t lose you.” He pulled back and put his forehead to hers.

“Good thing I’m a tightrope walker then, babe.”

__

_76646: U got anything for me?_

_17593: i dont know_

_76646: U okay?_

_17593: fine. just._

Clint stared at the lines of text, and was surprisingly unsurprised. 

_76646: It's getting to u._

_17593: no_

_76646: Yeah it is. Look. It's natural. Bet it's Him, right?_

_17593: all of them. but yea. Him. he fucking trusts me_

_76646: Of course he does._

_17593: no, i think he TRUST trusts me._

There were flashbacks there to be had, if he’d wanted them. To Borneo, to Baghdad, to Budapest-- a dozen ops before it, a dozen after it. Times when he could have-- if texts had been a thing then and he’d been texting members of anarchist hacker groups of dubious repute-- texted those exact words. (With slightly better punctuation, given that Phil Coulson was a fucking stickler about that.)

_76646: You trust him?_

_17593: is that weird? i mean, hes the stupidest big brother guy ever. hes like the mr rogers of spooks. i wish i werent keeping stuff from him_

_76646: Oh honey, no._

_17593: no what? no to stockholm syndrome?_

_76646: Do I look like fucking Quinn? No, never assume He doesnt know. Never._

_17593: i shouldnt trust him?_

_76646: I didn't say that. I said never assume he doesn't know._

_17593: that something you know from experience, or you talking out of your ass?_

_76646: Little of Column A, little of Column B. He's a senior agent. How do you think he got that way?_

_17593: whats in column a anyway?_

Adelaide, Bratislava, Cuzco. See above re dozens of ops-- or don’t. Not that Phil Coulson always _actually_ knew everything-- but he probably would soon as he got around to caring about it.

_76646: Things I learned the hard way that you shouldn't. I take it things are going well on the team?_

_17593: yeah… yeah they are. i wish… i guess i wish they werent constantly shoving shit under the carpet._

Quito, Rancho Cucamonga, Smolensk. Redactions in blue pencil, black pen, absurdly long passwords that needed to be changed every 30 days, biometric locks. And a bottle of tequila or three to erase the ones locked up in memory.

_76646: Don't we all. Anything trigger this?_

_17593: we found an old trainee of his. she was being controlled by something bad. he believed her. please dont tell anyone else about me being an idiot._

_76646: Our secret. It's natural. Probably inevitable. Ur okay. She okay?_

_17593: who?_

_76646: The ex-agent._

_17593: yea. yea, i think so. he said shed get a fair trial._

_76646: Ah. Want me to try and keep tabs?_

_17593: fuck hes coming_

Clint performed his once-weekly burn-phone dump with an over-the-shoulder flip into a passing garbage truck in the alley as he left Stark Tower, then shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the subway. 

The last thing he’d typed before he dumped the phone was “tell him I say hi.”

Hadn’t sent it, of course. Pointless marking territory you can’t defend.

His second temptation had been to call Nat, but she was still on ops, and likely to be so for a while.

Lucky was waiting for him at the door to his apartment when he got back, leash in mouth and That Look on his face. 

"Hey, don't look at me like that, it was Katie-Kate's turn to walk you today," he said, but he was snapping the leash into place as he said it. Between Avengers business, SHIELD business, and his continued extracurricular activities, he'd barely been home lately. Lucky and Kate Bishop had both suffered from a lack of attention. 

Kate wouldn't have reacted well to being taken on walkies (hard on the Louboutins), but Lucky certainly did, and the damp evening air, just this side of true fog, settled over him as they jogged. 

"I should probably tell her to stop, shouldn't I?" he asked Lucky, watching the look of intense concentration on the mutt's one-eyed face as he pissed against an empty newspaper box. "Her heart's really not in it anymore, and she still doesn't realize what she's up against."

Lucky turned a disapproving look on him, whether at the topic of conversation or at being interrupted, Clint couldn't tell.

"Okay, yeah, I shouldn't have started in the first place. You don't have to go all Black Widow on me, dog. I've still got the feed, yeah? For now. And it's not like Skye's giving me much lately. Oh for-- you done yet?" 

Lucky skip-hopped against the leash, pulling it far enough to allow him to make a decent attempt at marking a lamp post, a random section of curb and (before Clint could pull him back) a flattened cardboard box that probably served as a vagrant's nest.

"I didn't know Amador that well," Clint mused as he reeled Lucky in, getting another glare. "Don't look at me like that, it's not a diversion. She's got to be who Skye's talking about. And look at that, all these years later, turns out he was right not to give up on her." The fog was starting to separate, now, into individual drops. It was time to be getting home; Lucky tugged him back in the direction of the apartment.

"He always had a fucking soft spot for the hard cases, even if he used to pretend he didn't. Lucky for a lot of us, over the years. I should just be glad its him out there, not one of our other fine, rules-abiding, hard-assed senior agents. And hey," he brought his hand up to his eyes, "he seems fine. He's clearly winning Skye over with that patented Coulson charm. You can't program that shit." He sighed. "They'd have noticed by now if he was a mind-controlled robot, right? This is Phil; he can handle anything. He doesn't need--"

He broke off, swallowing thickly and stopping short on the threshold of his own apartment building. Lucky looked up at him curiously.

"-- he doesn't need me. Right?" He sighed, and let them both inside just as the clouds broke and rain came pouring down. 

They trudged up the stairs together, discussing frozen pizza options for the evening. Well, "discussing" in that Clint suggested combinations and Lucky whined like his heart was broken.

"I can't believe you don't want bacon cheeseburger. You always want that. I don't care; that's what I'm making. If he does ever need my help, he'll come get me. He knows I'll be here for him, even though.... And if he doesn't know that-- then... then he's not my Phil anymore. Is he?"

They were inside, Clint had released Lucky to go lick his balls happily on the couch, and he'd headed for the refrigerator with intent. Somehow, however, he hadn't made it; he was distracted by his laptop. By the feed that he'd clicked on without even thinking about it, the movement as natural as turning on a light. That feed showed the side of a man's bowed head, lamplight reflected on his high forehead. As he watched, Agent Coulson leaned back, let his head fall against the back of his chair, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. 

"Oh, Phil," Clint sighed, running one finger along the screen, over the curve of Phil's neck. "Fuck. So whatever, you're clearly doing okay. Bringing home strays like usual, and making them fall all over you. So maybe you don't need me right now. I, uh. Need you. Need to see you. So I'm just gonna... I'm just gonna watch. Okay?"

He rubbed a hand absently over the back of his neck. 

"But her, yeah, I gotta stop that. I helped get her into this mess and I know you'll kill me if I get her hurt. Maybe I can ease her out. Starting next time, huh?" He turned to open the freezer door, looking back over his shoulder to keep the feed in view.

"Fuck it, while I'm being an adult, I should just call him and ask, huh?"

From across the room, Lucky looked up from his balls, his expression a peculiarly doggy version of skepticism.

Clint laughed. "Yeah, I know, I know. Fat chance I do that." 

__

_17593: i know we havent been in touch man but you there? so pissed. check on austin dude pls hes done something stupid i know it. we're tracking him now. im scared. can you help?_

_17593: you there? damn. gonna warn him in person. check in when I can. skye out._

"Nooooo, damnit Skye, you idiot, goddamn," Clint thumped his head against the stucco wall and cursed. The ancient old woman who was sitting behind the counter turned to stare at him, cataract-clouded eyes opened wide. Clint smiled and waved at her, then went back to his phone, shaking it as if doing so would get another post to float in front of his eyes, Magic 8-Ball-like. "This does not end well, Skye. Trust Coulson, goddamnit. He doesn't need this," he said to the phone. 

His just-finished op had been so shitty he should have expected it would rub off onto everything else. He'd missed her messages by... it didn't matter how much, really. Even five seconds would have been too long. For a long moment, he hesitated over the first couple of digits of Phil Coulson's phone number. 

"Yeah," he muttered after a while, "like calling to say 'hey guess what I know you're alive and by the way how's that hacker of yours' wouldn't just get her in more trouble."

He ditched the phone in a garbage midden and sauntered over to the crossroads where the day laborers were looking for hire. Slouching, sullen, and sodden from a morning rainstorm, he fit in with them better than he ought to have. Within fifteen minutes, he would to be picked up for what was left of the day and given a free ride to somewhere else, somewhere from which he could disappear and head for home. 

In the evening, already back in New York, he would check his video feed again, linger on the expressions on their faces, watch as Himself handed her a little black box with the absurdly omnipresent SHIELD logo. It was a box he and Natasha both had seen before, once upon a long fucked up time ago.

_76646: Chances are good you won’t see this for a while, Skye. But if you do, I'm still here. Don't try and contact me, just stay safe. Stay devious. I've got my eyes on you._

_Ronin out._

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> Go check out Part II, "Rebooting," by Faeleverte, in which Phil needs help and the rating goes way up.
> 
> I can be found on tumblr [here](http://kat-har.tumblr.com)


End file.
